Well Worth the Risk
by nakala
Summary: Clare and Drew really need to talk, and she's going to make him listen.


**Started as my attempt to write a drabble, ended up a oneshot. First Degrassi fic, hope you like it. Leave a review.**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but my thoughts. **

She stood behind the table he'd just left looking for the words to stop him in his tracks. Clare had tried before to explain to Drew that what happened between them wasn't meaningless. Maybe she shouldn't have rushed after Eli after she'd just had sex with Drew without any explanation, but she had to do the mature thing she'd failed to do before. She owed it to her ex-boyfriend to end things officially, face to face. That didn't mean that Drew was a rebound or that she was confused.

Her feelings for her friend were real. She wouldn't have given herself to him so freely or at all were they not. Couldn't he understand? Couldn't he _try_ to understand?

"You were wrong."

Drew kept his stride toward the exit prompting Clare to abandon her safe place behind the table. In three hurried steps, her hand landed on Drew's shoulder gripping tightly. If he wouldn't listen willingly, she would force him to hear her out.

"You were wrong." Her voice pleaded with him, searched for the heart he'd adamantly locked her out of.

He didn't turn around. Drew stood a few feet from the door with his head downcast and muscles tensed. He didn't want to see the hurt he heard in her voice mirrored in her beautiful blue eyes. He didn't know how he could see her like that without his heart leaping from his chest. Her hand relaxed then tugged him urging him to face her.

He would not.

"Drew…you weren't a rebound. I could never-" she choked on her words as Drew's flushed face and demanding eyes assaulted her.

"God Clare." He growled. "You have no idea how it felt to have you run away from me like that. To your prefect, loving boyfriend-"

"Absent, Drew, you forgot absent and cheating."

"That doesn't change the fact that you were still hung up on him." Drew lamented. The teenager held his head down afraid of the emotions misting his eyes. "I saw it in your eyes, Clare; I could hear it in your voice," he whispered.

With tears seeping into her eyes, Clare smiled canting her head to the side as she reached her hand out and cupped his warm cheek. "You have it all wrong. That's what I've been trying to tell you." Her thumb slid over his check coaxing him to meet her eyes. When she felt his jaw tense under her fingers and saw his lips fall into a firm line, she knew he wouldn't. But she was not deterred. Boldly stepping forward, she placed her other hand over his other cheek and raised his face until his indigo eyes were staring back at her. She couldn't read the emotion alive in his eyes and the strain in his jaw could mean anything, but she would make him understand.

Clare Edwards' eyes twinkled, they were sad, true, but to him, they were sparkling windows. Her lips ticked up on one side almost resembling a smile before her lips collapsed into a soft pout.

"What you interpreted as longing or residual feelings was guilt. I broke up with my boyfriend – a boyfriend that was my universe, my forever – over voicemail. I didn't even know if he'd gotten the message before I gave into my feelings for you. I owed Eli more than that. And what was I supposed to do? He'd come all the way from New York to find me in one of the most precarious positions a person can find their partner in."

"You could have – I don't know – not left me standing there thinking I was just the guy you got under to get over your one true love."

Clare snaked her hands around Drew's neck burying one of her hands into the hair at the nape. She was standing so close that he could feel her chest grazing his as his breath shallowed. She was so close he could smell the coconut lip gloss shining on her lips.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you feel that way. It's – everything happened so fast and I just figured as soon as I cleared things with Eli I would come right back to you and we could forget he ever showed and things would finally be about just you and me." She explained.

"Edwards…" He breathed touching his forehead to hers.

"I did it for us," she reasoned. "I did it because I wanted to be with you and I didn't want Eli hanging over our heads. Tell me you understand."

His hands moved to rest on her waist, but he didn't say anything. He only lifted his head to look at her.

After Bianca, he wasn't sure he was ready to give another girl his heart. Drew Torres wasn't certain he trusted any woman to handle his deceptively fragile heart with care. The thing with Clare had come out of nowhere. One morning she was just Clare Edwards VP and by nightfall she'd become something else. He'd played it as cool as he needed to in the beginning, until she'd started to waver. Once he knew that _he_ unnerved her, he couldn't resist the flirting and mild innuendo. She made it so easy and he got a kick out of blushing, bumbling Clare. Then all of a sudden it wasn't just fun and it wasn't just for kicks; he'd actually started to want her, want to be there for her. He'd wanted to be her convenient fill-in for her absentee boyfriend who'd cheated on her. But she'd seemed too tossed. He couldn't make heads or tails of her relationship with Eli or her feelings for him, until the night in the school storage, which unfortunately ended up fueling his doubts more than his faith.

Flustered by Drew's silence, Clare tried a last ditch effort. "Can you say that you would have done anything different had the roles been reversed and it was you and Bianca instead of me and Eli?"

Desperation filled her words and stole Drew from his thoughts, from the past and to the present. Would he?

He's been known – practically still carries that burden – to make some of the stupidest mistakes, but would he have reacted as Clare did? Without even thinking, he knew he wouldn't. He'd have brushed Bianca off for his new girl, Clare, and probably forgot about Bianca and her feelings. He'd done it before and he'd hurt a wonderful girl, a few wonderful girls, in the process. She was right; he was wrong.

And, he'd be wrong again.

"Yeah."

He noted the hurt almost betrayed look in her eye the moment the word passed his lips. He also had to tighten his grip on her waist to keep the retreating girl in his arms.

"Let me go, Drew." She demanded with tears watering her eyes.

"No, Edwards, listen to me."

"I don't want to." She mumbled still fighting his hold.

"I would, and I would be wrong, Clare." He said trying to capture her eyes.

"Huh?"

"I wouldn't have done what you did, I've really never been as considerate as you, but I was wrong in the past and I would be wrong in your scenario."

She finally stopped fighting and relaxed in his arms. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that…I'm saying that I understand, and I was just scared that – that you were going to break my heart and leave me, eventually." He pulled her closer and she wrapped her arms around his neck, her face a breath away from his.

"I would never break your heart." She uttered earnestly.

Drew pulled her closer kissing her fervently which she returned just as eagerly. Clare's hands immediately found purchase at the base of Drew's head holding him tighter aiding in her pursuit of deepening their feverish kiss.

Drew calmed first, wearing a big smile. He couldn't help finding sweet, almost innocent, Clare's eagerness amusing. A blush coated her cheeks and she was panting like she'd just ran up a flight of stairs. Wearing that same smile, Drew leaned in and gave her a quick peck on her pink swollen lips. Gazing at her in this moment, he knew this could be the beginning of something special.

"You might but I'm willing to risk it." He intoned before seizing his girlfriend's lips again.

**nakala**


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